What Next? The Wall St. Shuffle?

January 14, 1986|By William Gruber.

Wall Street`s bulls are rooting for the bears--the Chicago Bears, that is, in the Super Bowl.

Robert Stovall, a veteran stock market analyst, said the broadest barometer of stock prices traded on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange`s composite index, has risen ``without exception`` every year in which a team from the original National Football League won the Super Bowl.

The index is based on the prices of all of the nearly 1,800 securities listed on the Big Board.

The record started with the first Super Bowl game in 1967, Stovall said, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs. The NYSE index posted a gain of 23.12 percent for the year.

Last year, when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins, the index posted a full-year gain of 27 percent. Moreover, the market also responded with a hefty advance on the Monday following the game. The NYSE index jumped 2.1 percent and the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average soared 34.01 points, or 2.77 percent.

``If the Bears win, I`m expecting a big day in the market on the following Monday,`` Stovall said.

Although the index has gone up when two American Football Conference teams won the Super Bowl--the Baltimore Colts in 1971 and the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1975, 1976, 1979 and 1980--Stovall pointed out that they originally were NFL teams.

Stovall, who formerly was chief market analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. and now heads his own market advisory firm, said the relationship between NFL victories and the stock market was first noticed in 1975 by a former New York Times sports columnist, Leonard Koppett. Stovall has been keeping a running tally of the games and the market`s fluctuations ever since.

``You can bet your life that I`m going to root for the Bears, even though I`ve always been a fan of the eastern teams,`` Stovall said. ``And many of the biggest professional traders on Wall Street are also now aware of the Super Bowl prediction.``

Stovall declined to say whether he plans to do any investing or wagering before the game.

``I never gamble away from the job,`` he said, ``but I might make a gentleman`s wager or two. Also, I`m always fully invested.``